I've been consumed with this puzzle over the last few days, so I thought I would share some of my thoughts:
At first, I believed the same as 4pollo:
A final thought on "the journey inward": the map seems to consist of a number of layers on top of each other: QR on top of AZTEC on top of DARK GREEN PIPES on top of LIGHT GREEN PIPES on top of a RED GRID. So maybe Level 1 of Days Destroyed would only need the QR, level 2 only the AZTEC, and so on.
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But now I think that the QR codes serve as a temporary distraction. The map could be split into different levels; but I don't think the QR codes are the first. Instead, each code describes a place in the text adventure; and will only be useful in later stages of the puzzle. But before I came to that conclusion, I did make some observations about them:
- The yellow circles on the borders of the codes seem oddly significant. I played with the idea of drawing a route between each QR code, using the codes with 6 dots as a guide on which direction the route should be going, but didn't get anywhere with that.
- Secondly, (again trying the advice of 4pollo), I tried getting an anagram out of the first letter of each QR code (including and using articles, like 'the' and 'these'). The resulting string was 'YYTAISATYTHYYYW'. Taking out the Ys, an anagram solver came up with the phrase "that was it". Coincidence? Maybe? Seems promising but also could be a rabbit trail.
Getting off the subject of QR codes, the supposed Aztec code is very interesting. I think it's probably supposed to be the first level in the puzzle, as it does seem the most obvious. The fact that when divided and flipped over the code is almost exactly the same seems to say that the code was not generated. (Although here's a thought - I don't know enough about the format of the code to know if it's valid or not - the string encoded could be a quasi-palindrome, like the inscription on the doorstep of Porta Alchemica: 'SI SEDES NON IS').
Here's a representation of the code in binary (brown tile = 1, other = 0):
1110000111010000101
1010101110010111110
0001001100111101100
0011000011111000100
0001110100011001010
1010111111111101110
0110110000000111000
1000010111110110000
0101110100010100000
1011010101010101101
0000010100010111010
0000110111110100001
0001110000000110110
0111011111111110101
0101001101010111000
0010001111100001100
0011011110011001000
0111110101111010101
1010000101110000111
I tried putting a few lines through a binary-to-text converter and a Morse Code translator, but got nowhere.
Any more ideas for the Aztec code?
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